Xiamen City of Fujian Province has implemented a “Neighborhood Monitoring (近邻监督)” program, where certain residents are hired as “Neighborhood Supervisors” to monitor the daily activities of people around them. In May 2023, 307 “Neighborhood Supervisors” were officially appointed in Xiamen’s Tong’an District. Recently, a photo circulating on Chinese social media showed a group of people seated around a long table for a tea discussion, with a sign behind them reading “Neighborhood Monitoring Office, Zhenhai Community, Zhonghua Street, Siming District”.
Public critics of the program refer to it as an escalation of state surveillance, calling it a CCP method of inciting citizens to spy on and turn against one another.
Editor’s Note: The CCP’s “Neighborhood Monitoring (近邻监督)” program differs from the “Neighborhood Watch” programs in the U.S. The intention of the former is to induce neighbors to monitor each other and to report on (criminalize) each other over “suspicious speech or actions,” i.e. speech or actions that are not in line with what the CCP desires; the latter is intended to have the neighbors watch out for each other to prevent incidents or crime that could be harmful to residents.
Source: NTDTV, February 4, 2025
https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2025/02/04/a103955756.html